crikey.

kompressor has beaten my lungs up and i can no longer breathe. kompressor is german industrial artist but he comes across as a triumph the insult comic dog robot. he apparently has serious songs but pushing him well into camp land is kompressor's bizarre covers.

further causing massive hyperventilation fun is a reminder from jen about this overboard christian kids page, which turns out to be an intricate parody/spoof. i mean, between desecularizing the internet and selling abstinence thongs, it's gorgeously insane.

all right. here's a list about my future witnessing to live music (as opposed to witnessing via live music) and it's christopher lee's birthday today. the dirty monkey is overdue on recent dvd reviews from me about spirited away, glengarry glenross and fear and loathing in las vegas but ...

tall und tan und young und lovely,
the girl from ...ipanema! goes walking
and when she passes, each one she passes goes.... AUUUUGHGUHUGHUGGHUGH!!!

where's the asthma meds?

just posted a review on the new pornographers' latest album and it's a few volts of delight.

meanwhile, aside from tour news comes word that neko case is being asked to pose for playboy as the sexiest indie rock babe. she's pleading shyness right now (isn't that always the case with the boldest singers?), but then there's the poolhall photoshoot from the now defunct kutie magazine to fire up the blood.

and the passes at girls who wear glasses? well, yeah. amongst other attributes. the online version of me would look at typing speed and proper spelling along with a sense of humour....and a fine eye for detail.

look, it was just something i remembered from a t-shirt. it rhymes, it's sly, it's short and sweet. perfect for a title. or motto. i've lost the plot now.

...look!
avocadoes! on the new big list!
amongst the other new lists!
and pardon my deranged typing, but i spent two hours today copying more images over and updating the internal links to the new host.
that requires commitment.
or a total lapse in sanity.
or somewhere in between....

....
yeah yeah yeahs!
akufen!
it's all good!

prior to a tirade, let's get hit up with good news:

radiohead.
will release their sixth album
hail to the thief on june 9.
preceeded by the first single.
there there on may 26.

the white stripes also drop their elephant next week, so the summer choons fast approacheth. and let's see how i refrain from leeching before hand. or if. must....resist....p2p...

this turned out to be a great big list, so i'll thieve myself but touch it up a bit.

not to maintain a newyorkcentricity here, but i've made a few copies of a mixed cd with a rough new york city theme. one helluva town is the title, songs for the five boroughs is the subtitle, various artists are the sources, small is the music library at present, hence a few repeat offenders.

ah, solex. tragically, i won't see her next door at matador on business now. according to her newsletter, her next album will be released on another label.

the good news is that she's in the midst of editing her fourth album, so new music from ms. elizabeth esselink is due soon. graig and i caught her live at the comfort zone back in 2001 and we was thrilled to coughing bits with her ironing board of sounds. she makes it look so easy and fun to play catchy quirky music that i kick myself daily for not doing anything like that in my life. ...and i heart her. awww.

more quirkiness due soon from another sound maven: the aphex twin. 26 mixes for cash compiles all his nutty remix work, for kicks, for cash, for whatever. i pre-ordered mine through warp since it includes many hard to find stuff, like his takes on philip glass and nobukazu takemura. i've had to download scratchy mp3s repeatedly on each computer of his hard to find music and this double CD is long desired.

[listening - brigitte bardot: contact.]

time to geek out a bit further: news arrives in the form of 3 albums of the incidental music from the prisoner. these 3 albums commemorate the 35th anniversary of the landmark television series devoted to the individual and i want them.

especially for that loopy hypnotic piece from the general, which wagon christ sampled masterfully on his musipal album.

amazon says they're shipping, but i'll see if i can find them elsewhere first.
be seeing you.

[listening - dirty radio (from underworld)
and the fire alarm test at work.]

okay, i know i'm supposed to be paying attention, but massive attack's new album 100th window is out next week already??

damn. just when i was starting to miss my humble collection curated by graig. and i can experience whatever the heck this is:

A 13 MINUTE LONG BASSLINE
TO DO DINNER
TO SLEEP AT THE WHEEL TO
OR FUCK YOUR BRAINS OUT TO.

i admire that ambition. and i can't wait to hear it, but this time, i'll avoid the temptation to scour the p2p networks for any samples. for once, before a major release, i'll wait until i fight the cellophane wrappers and barcode stickers off, put the cd and hit track 1.

[listerning - the rapture: house of jealous lovers (12" version).]

well the good news is that i'm able to provide a good writeup this weekend. the monkey now has my kid 606 concert review and i haven't done much else this weekend. i know there's ...some sporting event this evening, but once again, i'm missing the details on where i'm going and when. so i've been reading, accumulating dirty laundry and trying not to stare at what work needs to still be done around the pad.

the weather's getting warmer, though. maybe i'll pretend to do something useful and nonvirtual now.

[listening - thievery corporation - samba tranquille.]

before i really raise the roof with my life outside of fun, let's quickly cover more engaging interests.

i caught the blues explosion last night and they were trapped into playing a concert. with speedball baby. and elliott smith, which didn't really stick out as you'd expect it to, but was a great aside from a great artist.

meanwhile, my main distraction from the onslaught of work business yesterday, in the midst of diagnosing a webmail server's hardware woes and one insane backup with a low chance of restore (wheee..), jwz, original netscape/mozilla developer and nightclub owner extreme, linked to the mixerman diaries, which is hilarious account of a doomed recording experience from the mixing engineer of an unnamed up-and-coming-but-down-and-falling band where the namecalling, accidents, egoclashing and label interfering collides in 8 weeks of nuttiness.

jobs, especially with other people, never seem to make much sense. bbc america has started airing the office, a hauntingly accurate and hilarious comedy about, well, an office, with one uncool manager and many frail egos. imagine a more deadpan, documentary-styled office space and you're almost there. well worth a watch, especially after 2 father ted's and 1 monty python.

[listening - ladytron: playgirl (snap ant version) (downloaded).]

hillary rosen, battleaxe head of the increasingly outdated riaa, is stepping down! wahoo!

ms. rosen has been the frontline attacker for the entire war of music on the internet, possible fees on ISP bandwidth to battle piracy and the continued high prices of compact discs. her departure doesn't signal a turnaround, but it removes one of the highest presences in the increasing obsolete system of music ownership.

now if only the record labels would learn.
or jack valenti.

joe strummer, outspoken lead singer from the clash, arguable the world's most important band, died earlier today from a heart attack during the night. he was fifty years old.

if you have an opportunity, watch the 1999 documentary westway to the world, which features all the clash city rockers talking about their time together. caught it on mtv2 last week, adding to the poignancy. it doesn't really help that i was in the midst of compiling a list of those who died this year, so i'm feeling especially glum now.

alas.
london calling.

mary hansen, one of the lovely members of the swinging recyclist band stereolab, was killed monday in a bicycle accident about london at the age of 36.

her beautiful countermelodic vocals will be missed. i only have their latest album, abc music: the radio 1 sessions, with me right now, which covers the group's 10 year run thus far. i guess i'll run through it again tonight to pay tribute.

rest in peace, mary.

meanwhile, here's an orphan entry i nearly forgot about: helsinki taxis must pay royalty fee for playing music in front of customers, which strikes me as kinda dumb, although not as bad as the attempted song restrictions for girl guide's campfires. i understand the point of protecting rights for the authors of music, but to the point where no one can enjoy the music? we are seriously undermining our cultural legacy if our works of art are locked away and used to rake serious cash mostly for the publisher.

and in the case of workplace music, why do these people have time to go after relatively small operations, where it's nothing but the radio. if the radio stations already paid to play, does it mean that they should notify all listeners to not sell anything whilst doing any commerce whatsoever?

thankfully, there are musicians hard at work to point out this madness. here are some audio clips from the illegal art concert at new york's tonic in november (that i missed), which confront the problems with copyrighted works.

how have you spent seven years of your life? well, cassette boy took seven years of straight taping of various media and recontextualized various words together to produce one mind-boggling work called the parker tapes (which you can buy through spymania).

based on sample recordings from the album , especially the one where ol' blue eyes talks about flying his airplane to new york, will make your jaw drop... not just for the humour but the devotion it took to sift through all the material to stitch together this pastiche. this is up there with all of john oswald's plunderphonics work.

somedays, the onion staples the lameass truth right to your forehead:
"modern-day proust emails friend six times a day."

i don't nearly inundate graig that frequently anymore, although he keeps threatening to publish my goofy words as a quick publication well after he's famous and after i'm senile, vegetabley or dust and ashes. then again, my sin is complete gibberishy nonsense as opposed to pedantic observations.

that i save the bleedin' obvious for here. a few nights ago, the supermarket was piping in a strange parody of frank sinatra singing mrs. robinson, except it was no parody. i can see why the chairman of the board was thought of as a square after 1967 after hearing sinatra cover the simon & garfunkel standard, which sounds damn peculiar. of course, growing up familiarized to the lemonheads rawer version makes me far removed from the original timeline but ding! ding! ding? ouch...

meanwhile, here's an electroclash carcrash in waiting: fischerspooner play two shows tonight with the possibility of brilliant theatrical decadence or promschool production show or both. after getting raked in the british press for their apparent multimillion dollar flop, possibly even taking down their record label, you'd think it'd be a desperate time for the duo, with their costume change a minute and backroom diva exposé projectioner show that leaves the audience perplexed or bored. then again, with kylie minogue possibly making a cameo after a recent remix, who the heck knows? could my arse be arsed to see kylie's arse live?

doubt it. maybe electroclash with crash and burn, bringing back the oldschool electro back. or it's time for the hair metal band return.

or just time to hide again.

here are two lesser known acts that you should be mildly aware of.

mike doughty, the former singer from soul coughing, headlines at joe's pub thursday november 29. i had always wanted to see soul coughing live (yuval gabay styles highly yeah) but this should be quite entertaining in its own right. doughty has a few solo albums available for a limited time only, so save at least one for me.

then there's david cross of mr. show fame, out with his own 2cd comedy album shut up, you fucking baby. recorded live whilst david opened for musical acts in concert venues instead of comedy clubs, it's paving the way for a dvd and another little tour to basking in his fan's glowing warmth. he'll open for one of yo la tengo's mammoth 8 night hanukkah set at maxwell's, somewhere in lovely hoboken.

speaking of comedy, along broadway south of houston, one day each week, there'll be a bunch of young'uns (or my age, i forget to pay attention frequently) with little clipboards trying to promote some comedy show. however, the hard hard people here show their own brand of morose humour:

do you like comedy?
no, i prefer tragedy, and my life has plenty of it.

do you like to laugh?
only at the suffering of others.

would you like to see a comedy show and laugh?
i'm sorry, i'm not allowed to laugh. doctor's orders...

this brings to mind a line i've never had an opportunity to use when walking by the dianetics building on yonge street in toronto, when the scientologists come out with their clipboards:

would you like a free personality test?
sorry, i'm 100% personality free.

thankyouthankyou,i'mhereallweek.

no, this entry doesn't refer to whether i look like mr. macgregor or mr. isaak, although that's something i'll have to query about later.

rather, graigness, amongst the now usual barrage of strange posts with numbers in the titles (boy that's going to make sense in the future. a secret message ...from my weblog!) (i kid, i kid, i am banging lassie), threw down a hidden nugget of truth: i am or have worked on a song that features the cowbell and only the cowbell. of course, most of my files were on my computer, which i only recent reacquired and resassembled, so my efforts were tucked away. it was tragically ignored during my entire summer brouhaha with moving down here (incidentally, new york does have a fair bit of leaves, although we tend to throw some nice newspapers and other garbage on the ground to so we can experience the wonderful crunching sound all year round. central park is going orange and red, so there's still upstair foliage).

however, i'll be back in full force and once i'm cozy with my piece, i'll try to post it somewhere. i should also look at posting my other strange compositions over the past few years, but i have the habit of just giving it away, so graig probably has all my flights of whimsy and plundering of phonics.

of course, there are acts that have been doing the perversion of popular culture for a long time and one of those acts hits nyc in a week and a half. tonic will play host to the evolution control committee along with a mixed set of illegal music from illegal art (and one of the negativland hombres!), meaning i can scoop some hard to find goodies november 17.

thank goodness i still keep reading the toronto free weeklies online, otherwise, i'd completely forget that atomic 7's debut album ...gowns by edith head is out. now has an interview with brian connelly (brian was also part of my favourite funster band ever, shadowy men on a shadowy planet) and eye has a review of the disk. i might have difficulty getting the album here, but i guess there's always the mint records mail order doo-dad. or graig. or an innovative genius in retail in these parts.

of course, things make more sense now since i did see a store along queen west that had a shirt with save your fork there's pie written on it, which is one of the song titles on the album. making more sense is now i want it and i'm not in toronto anymore. and i'm not edith head and i don't think i'm edith head either.

two years ago, for a christmas gift, i gave my bro the beastie boys' 2 cd best of compo. in the liner notes to the sounds of science, there's an oblique reference to country mike, which was an apparent country music album that the boys had made.

of course, i thought it was a joke.

until i saw the country mike album yesterday, which i failed to mention from my latest weekly jaunt to other music. i was this close to picking it up, but along with the sigur rós album, along with newness from mr. scruff, david holmes, stereolab and a few others, i left them until i find an apartment. or until paycheques take a quicker amount of time to deposit than 25 days.

of course, after work, i went to forbidden planet to pick up gta3: vice city, so who do i kid? a video game that has you stiffarm motorcyclists and smash cars with baseball bats all in the goal to bring crime to south florida? i can be so civil sometimes.

yeah, yeah, yeah.

i think i'm throwing around money like stupid, but it was the weekend away, so i can pay myself back by remembering buy nothing day next month.

of course, when you step into a store when they're playing the new sigur rós album () overhead, you either:

1. break down and buy it,
   
2. or you just break down.

then, the controversial game grant theft auto 3: vice city came out today, so i would buy that, except that only pre-ordered copies were issued due to demand. the benefit of buying that game would be that many a night would be consumed by it, thus indirectly saving me money, but c'mon, it's new york city. versus vice city. hmmmm....

well, 24, season 2, starts tonight; maybe that and some laundry washing of the clothes used as packing from the 3 boxes of mine graig graciously stored on my behalf.

but motorbikes!
argh!

well, that extinction of the blonde story turned out to be a sham pulled off the mischievious ®™ark crew. it struck me as odd in the first place, but you never would have thought the press would have completely jumped on that without checking their sources. there's proof in those hills about what really drives the media industry.

®™ark (or rtmark for those uninterested in glyphs), aside from their media projects, also partner with detritus to produce illegal art, a record label devoted to copyleft (or anti-copyright) music, where by existing music is fiddled around with to produce new music. i have a few of their albums and mp3s about, and i want to get girl talk after hearing a few tracks off a site i can't recall and the great canadian brave new waves. download a few of the tracks to listen to a new world of audio entertainment.

impeccable timing on my part.

i fly out today, back to toronto, and look who plays tomorrow. m. doughty at northsix. excerpt (links added by me):

Bring your bonbons and let our buddy Mike Doughty, ex-founder and frontman of the late and much lamented Soul Coughing, show you the love at NorthSix this Thurs., Aug 15, at 9 p.m. Now a solo acoustic funky whiteboy soulman troubadour, he’s mixing new solo material with unplugged but still hepped-up renditions of Soul Coughing’s greatest hits (which, by the way, Rhino released as Lust in Phaze earlier this year), and we expect he’ll be merching his new solo live album, Smofe + Smang; if not, you can buy it at the not-shyly-handled mikedoughty.com. Oh, and he’s got a new book of poetry out, and is contributing songs to movie soundtracks, etc. If he’s taking requests, ask him to do his Jagger impersonation. 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Kent & Wythe Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103; $12.

i'm sure he'll show up again when i return in september, much like they might be giants after their free central park show the same day. new yorkers through and through.

still.
fuddle duddle.

taking a break from going out and out and doing my best to seemingly break this humble playspace called eggnog, here's some diggity:

primal scream has their new album evil heat due out shortly at least in europe/japan (north america? unknown at this time). if their back catalogue is any indication, the new album will still be intense whilst maintaining their ever-changing sound, this time more 1980s electro style. first single: miss lucifer, out already somewhere. can't wait.

when you have badly drawn boy perform an in-store session for about 120 people at soundscapes in the midst of the heat of an august night, you are definitely thrown into the furnace. the last time i sweated like that was in a sauna. avec graig and carla and val, the store was packed tight; organizers passing water bottles and paper towels, audience members grabbing cds off the shelf and fanning themselves with them. after what seemed a long wait, damon gough came out, tuque and all, and played two sets of acoustic guitar of his songs, both released and for the future album due in october. there was a 10 minute intermission between sets for everyone to step outside and cool off in the evening, with walkers-by on the sidewalk curious what the fuss was about. it was a highly casual environment to see a great songwriter and singer perform his music.

they bring light in.

underworld,
a hundred days off.

i've been waiting a while, i am not a fanboy, my loyalty is a two way road, i've overheard the new single, the new single is also about time off, two months off, they bring light in, they've been lied to, i've been to a concert, with the markoman, we were almost late, we caught the first song, they tore the roof off, oddly priced merchandise, thirty and eight cents, now they're back soon, single september, album a shade later, no mention of re-tour, i've seen north america, i speak cryptically, tombs and mausoleums, nonsense ad nauseum, got my flaunt stick, ditch the glowstick, our eyes grow accustomed, accustomed to the darkness now.

dj shadow kicked out a monster show at the kool haus last night. with the spider hunter, the utterly humble slash modest josh davis shared his love for music and eloquently spoke about what he honoured he was. then he cut the floor with 2 turntables, a few mixers, a cd scratcher and some other equipment i couldn't see.

opening acts were the old school mixing of TASC, the up-and-coming rjd2 (who tried putting the nod on tears for fears' head over heels but successfully took on the cars) and some conscientious rap from boston's mr. lif and akrobatik (performing individually and as the group the perceptionists). also screened was B+'s short film keepintime: talking drums about four of the best beat drummers. the encore brought out a live drummer with the shadow and laid the beat down. an amazing response from the normally complacent t.o. crowd for a truly transcendent show.